how little I’d end up caring about fashion, how utterly drab I’d be capable of looking. Though perhaps that was a positive in her eyes, a contrast designed to highlight her fabulousness, like a matte frame on a glossy photo.
The waiter bustled over as soon as she was settled. Luckily Mona was never one to ponder menus and asked for her standard chicken salad. Zaina opted for a salad as well. I’d planned to console myself with a plate of pasta, but I crumbled under pressure and seconded Mona’s order.
‘How are the plans coming along?’ Zaina asked when he’d noted everything down and left.
‘Not bad,’ Mona said, running a hand heavy with cocktail and knuckle rings over her smooth, brown hair, and I thought, if I were as small as her I’d cut off all my hair as well.
‘Rulla’s gone a bit crazy on us,’ she continued, ‘which is weird timing since all the plans have been finalized.’
Zaina gave her a sympathetic look. ‘It’s probably just because it’s getting so close.’
‘Yeah, but she needs to calm down. I was never like that for my wedding. She completely lost it at Mom when we were at the tailor the other day. The florist called to say her bouquet would have ten white roses instead of fifteen, and she lost her mind.’
‘Why can’t she have fifteen?’ I asked.
‘The bouquet would be way too big, proportion-wise,’ she replied, looking at me like it was obvious. ‘Rulla thinks bigger is better, but she doesn’t need that many.’
Zaina nodded in agreement. ‘So what happened?’
‘Nothing,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Rulla and Mom started yelling at each other, Mom stormed off, and I gave Rulla a lecture on proportions all the way home,’ she finished with a chuckle. ‘Oh, yeah, I almost forgot.’ She put a hand on my arm to get my attention. ‘You’re going to be in the Yelwa, right?’
I was saved from an immediate answer by the arrival of our food and the resultant shuffling of things on the table to make space, the offers of extra cheese, more bread, fresh pepper and the like.
The last time I participated in a Yelwa must have been at Zaina’s wedding. That particular tradition is the only one where the bride doesn’t really take center stage, despite being perched on her own little makeshift throne. No, the focus isn’t on her, but on the ones surrounding her – the unwed girls, family and close friends circled around her chair, holding a large, green and gold embroidered blanket over her head. I remember the feeling, standing there clutching my bit of fabric while all the women watched us flutter and flap the thing over the bride’s head. They ought to have been directing good wishes to the bride, and perhaps they were, but everyone knew the women took it as an opportunity to get a good look at the unmarried girls. ‘That one in pink might appeal to my son.’ ‘The one in yellow is too tall.’ ‘Yes, but prettier than the one in ruffles, don’t you think?’ We were presented for quite a long time: at least fifteen minutes, or three songs, whichever finished first. Standing there, flapping and fluttering the fabric, trying to keep in time with the music and the chants of blessing. Flapping and fluttering, until our elbows locked and our arms threatened to fall off.
‘Hey,’ Mona said, drawing my attention back to her. ‘You’ll do it, right?’
I puffed out a breath, pushing my fork through the salad. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ she said, frowning. ‘She’s my sister.’
‘I’ll be the oldest one doing it.’
She smiled, and though it was full of sympathy, it wasn’t lacking in resolve. ‘All the more reason not to say no.’
I looked from her to Zaina. She was holding her breath, forever fearful of confrontation. But it was such a little thing, and Mona and I had been friends for a long time. I nodded my assent.
‘Excellent,’ Mona said, attacking her salad with relish now that things had been sorted. ‘It’ll be fun.’ I scoffed at her attempt to console me. We’d been to a lot of weddings; she wasn’t fooling anyone. ‘Okay,’ she continued, black eyes drifting up to the sky in thought for a moment. ‘You, Heba, Eman, and Fatima makes four from our side. The groom’s family can get the rest from their end. Did I tell you how my aunt called to remind me about it?’ Zaina and I shook our heads. ‘She calls and goes, “Mona, how many virgins have you found for the Yelwa?”’
Zaina nearly choked on her chicken, and my laugh caught the attention of the guys at the neighboring table. Mona leaned forward, and we followed suit. ‘I said to her, “I can find unmarried girls, but beyond that I make no promises.”’
The boys shifted their torsos towards us, leaning forward and back around each other for a better view at what had us laughing so hard. We pulled in even closer to one another, Zaina’s hand covering her mouth as she giggled uncontrollably. I shook my head at the nonsense our aunties were capable of speaking. Finally, we composed ourselves, calm and quiet in a moment, reduced to a dome of decorum, and Zaina asked Mona about her job. I wasn’t listening though; I kept thinking about what Mona’s aunt had said. I wondered what it would be like if the Yelwa cloth could somehow detect non-virgins, like if the fabric started to smoke when I held it. I imagined the pointing, the gasping, the shaking of heads as the fabric burned my fingers. I wondered how many girls it would smoke for; would I really be the only one?
Later that night I lay panting in my bed. There was a vise around my lungs, squeezing tight. It burned. I sucked in air through my nose and mouth, great big gulps, but it didn’t help. My lungs continued to sting like acid. I flicked on the lights, turned on some music, needing as much stimulation as possible. Maybe it would distract me from the sensations, from the certainty that I was, at that moment, dying.
There’s this lore, or perhaps it’s superstition. It’s about a demon called a yathoom who comes to you in the night. He sits on your chest, feet splayed in a squat, growing heavier and heavier until you wake because you can no longer breathe. Even waking will not save you; he’ll cling while you gasp and scratch at your breasts. When you feel on the brink, like you can’t take it anymore, the yathoom rolls off and back down to hell. He’s only supposed to visit on Thursdays, which is both arbitrary and unexplained.
I’ve had one for years. He adheres to no schedule and cannot distinguish day from night. His splayed feet bear claws, sunk into my chest beneath my armpits. He is a compression on my lungs that I can’t shake. Some days he gives me respite, curling on my diaphragm so I’m hardly aware of his presence, but it’s never long before he’s back, slathering my lungs with his black cement tongue. I tip my head back every so often, mouth open in a silent scream, but nothing startles him. He just hugs me tighter.
Sometimes I think my yathoom is my loneliness in form and function. Something my subconscious has obsessed over so much, it’s been made real, like that mythological monster who only exists because you believe in him. Maybe that’s true of all monsters, I’m not sure.
‘So I’m going to start a film club,’ Yousef said, plopping himself down on the corner of my desk and sending documents drifting to the floor.
I scowled and bent to retrieve them. ‘Like a movie club but pretentious?’
‘Ha ha,’ he replied. ‘No, seriously. I want to start a club and every month we’ll screen a film and discuss it. And it won’t be blockbusters or even festival darlings, it’ll be little-known movies and adaptations … like that Tempest film we watched. That was fun, right?’
I nodded. ‘Sure.’
It had been fun. He’d set up a projector in the apartment he